


The Any Time Diner

by wintergrey



Series: Marvel Snax [9]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-26 00:53:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1668731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintergrey/pseuds/wintergrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Roane, who wanted some fic based on <a href="http://tumblr.selkie.net/post/86420235339/babbleon-someone-should-write-a-story-based-on">this photoset</a> and who has been cheerleading my writing like a champ lately. :D</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Any Time Diner

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roane/gifts).



The diner belongs to Sam. Not literally, of course, though he's dreamed of buying it more than once. It's his by virtue of one of the oldest childhood rules of law: he was there first. It's an ordinary little place, nothing but a pinpoint shimmer in the dust that rolls across the meandering road north of Vegas. If you stick on the road long enough, it'll take you from Nevada into Cali, which was the trip Sam was making when he first stopped in.

There's nothing of note about the place, really. The coffee is decent, the pie is homemade, the motel only has nine rooms, the customers are transient but some of them are regulars running everything from truckloads of fruit to guns to girls along this stretch of nowhere that the police and the feds can't afford to cover, if they ever bothered. Sam ignores everything but the girls. The phone booth outside is ideal for anonymous tips.

The only thing Sam can think of that makes this place stand out is the way that it seems caught in time, like a fly in amber, some indeterminate number of years ago. It is a perfect little chunk of accumulated Americana, untouched by modernization—it sure as hell isn't a Starbucks. It's not so much backwards as it is timeless.

Sam thought long and hard about bringing Steve here. What did it in the end was that wild-eyed look the man got sometimes when they were too much immersed in the modern world. Steve has adapted beautifully, it's not that. Modern life is too much even for the people who were born into it. Hell, it's too much for Sam sometimes.

"Wanna grab a coffee?" He asks, one afternoon as Steve is wrapping up his run—long after Sam's legs have given out on him.

The run is a mistake on the day after leg-day at the gym but it got Steve out of Stark Tower. That place was soul-killing in a way that wasn't so much Tony's fault or his designer's fault but in the way that the whole building was so new that the lack of history in it was tangible. Tony put in a whole World Fair wing but when the only place you could call comfortable was literally a museum and a memorial? Hardly cheering.

"Sure. Where to?" Steve strips off his sweat-damp T-shirt and pulls a grey Captain America hoodie on over his bare skin.

"Nevada." Sam laughs at the look on Steve's face as he processes that. "We can take one of Stark's jets."

"Okay. But if Tony thinks we're going to Vegas..." Steve lets it trail off.

"Who said I was gonna ask Tony?" Sam taps his nose. "Pepper's my go-to girl."

Steve takes to the place like a duck to water, like Sam knew he would. It's nearly midnight and Sam is watching him take on his second plate of pancakes. This was a good idea.

"People still read newspapers?" Steve stops with his fork poised over the next wedge of pancakes stacked six high and layered with butter and syrup. Sam checks over his shoulder: a trucker who looks like someone carved him out of beef jerky is reading a paper, the local paper.

"Some people still do." Sam steals a piece of Steve's bacon even though he hit his limit about five hundred calories ago. "Guess they do here."

"So why this place?" Steve stabs through that wedge of fluffy goodness and forks it into his mouth with a grunt of contentment.

"I dunno." Sam still can't answer that. "Just feels... normal. The normal I grew up with, I guess. Been coming here ten years, it never changes. Even when it changes—" The counter got replaced three years ago, five years ago they redid the booths in green instead of red. "—even then it's the same."

"Nat took me to this old-fashioned place. What's that word again, when it's all old-style and backward?" Steve settles back so the waitress—a heavy Latina girl in sensible shoes and a green polyester uniform—can refill his coffee.

"Retro?" She offers, with a smile as she leans over to refill Sam's cup as well.

"That's the word, thanks. Good coffee by the way." Steve smiles back at her and her lashes flutter, her long, black-and-copper ponytail bounces when she turns away to cross the diner with a rolling swing of her hips.

"I'll put on another pot just for you," she says over her shoulder.

"Anyway, retro. I guess it was supposed to help me relax away from modern life, but it just felt artificial. It was almost more modern for being made to look like it was set in the past." Steve shrugs one shoulder. "This place is different. Natural."

"Authentic." That was what Riley used to call it. Remembering him makes Sam melancholy and happy at the same time. Such a strange feeling but so much better than the hole of loss he used to feel. "You do well with authentic."

"That's why we're friends."

Sam isn't sure what to say to that except, "Thanks." It's a hell of a compliment.

So is the fact that Steve wants to come back here, enough times that it stops feeling just like Sam's place and more like their place. When Sam swings through on his own, Adela asks him where Steve is. Today her hair is black and crimson.

"Out of the country. He'll be back."

"Good. Not that you're not eye-candy enough on your own." She slides his pie and his his coffee in front of him. "But he's a fine bonus."

"That's one way of putting it." Sam can't help laughing. He knows she and the staff know who Steve is, you can't miss it, but they always treat him like he's just another guy. "I'll let him know you said so."

"You do that." Adela winks at him before swishing away to take another order.

Sam picks up his paper and turns to the sport section—he sets the political pages aside. That's all old news and lies by the time it gets to the press. Sam sees the original version of those stories, sometimes in person. Someone slides into the seat across from him—he knows who it is and he should be on edge but this place is special. It feels as though nothing bad can happen to him here.

"He's not out of the country." The Winter Soldier picks up the political pages. The sloping orange rays of the setting sun cut through the diner window to flash off his metal arm where it's exposed between the sleeve of his denim jacket and his glove.

"No. But since you weren't showing up to talk while he was here, I figured I'd make a trip without him." It feels a little like being unfaithful, if Sam is honest with himself about it. He folds the paper and puts it aside. Bucky's hair is cropped short, he hasn't shaved in a day or two but he looks good otherwise, if underfed.

"You knew I was here?"

"Pay phone gets used for a lot of different tips. And people are still on the lookout for a guy with a metal arm." Calls come in every day from people who are sure they've seen Bucky. Only one has ever come from this pay phone. "Just luck that I recognized the number as it went past. We weren't exactly secretive about coming out this way, you could have tracked us in your sleep."

"And?"

"Cherry pie is excellent today." Sam waves to get Adela's attention. "On me."

"What are you going to tell Steve?" Bucky looks anxious now, his metal fingers drum lightly on the newspaper—the headline of the gossip page is pure speculation about Captain America.

"That he missed some incredible pie this time. Same order for my friend here," Sam says when Adela swings past. "Anything else you want to say, you can tell him yourself."

"When?" There's an edge to Bucky's voice. Sam's eyes are on his pie, flakes of crust and shimmering cherry filling, but Bucky's growing tension is palpable.

"In your own time." Sam takes a bite of pie, washes it down with a swallow of coffee. "This place has an endless supply of it. Take as much as you need."


End file.
